Posts tagged as last week tonight with john oliver

Last Week Tonight was off last week, but John Oliver and crew uploaded a web exclusive last night to bring attention to a very important issue: April Fools' Day is the worst. Or as Oliver puts it, "April Fools' Day is to comedy as St. Patrick's Day is to Irish culture." If you agree, you can show your support by taking Last Week Tonight's No-Prank Pledge.

Feeling extra tired this morning? Here's a clip from last night's Last Week Tonight about the pointlessness of Daylight Saving Time, which has nothing to do with farming and is actually hurting us more than it's helping us.

Great news: HBO just announced that they've renewed Last Week Tonight with John Oliver for a third and fourth season. Each season will consist of 35 episodes to run in 2016 and 2017. "We are incredibly proud to have John as part of the HBO family," said HBO president Michael Lombardo on the news. "His unique ability to deliver socially significant commentary week after week, along with his innate comedic brilliance, puts John in a class by himself." Last Week Tonight just kicked off its second season on February 8th, but it looks like HBO wisely wants Oliver and crew to stick around for a while.

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver returns to HBO for its second, 35-episode season this Sunday, and ahead of its debut THR spoke with Oliver about what he learned from season 1 as well as what we can expect from the upcoming episodes. The show won't stray much from last season's format, but Oliver revealed that four new researchers have been added to the Last Week Tonight staff from The New York Times Magazine, ProPublica, and Al Jazeera. Oliver's most interesting response came when he was asked about the success of Last Week Tonight's trademark extended segments:

Though the extended segment was something the show made signature [...]

HBO's Last Week Tonight with John Oliver is on hiatus until February, but that didn't stop Oliver and crew from uploading the above Thanksgiving-themed web exclusive all about America's strange tradition of presidential turkey pardoning: "Let's be honest here: Every single turkey is guilty. Specifically, guilty of having delicious bird parts that should be serving time in the prison of my mouth."

Here's a clip from last night's Last Week Tonight, in which John Oliver breaks down the many problems surrounding municipal violation fines and why getting a ticket for a misdemeanor can potentially ruin the lives of those who can't afford to pay them up front.

Last night's Last Week Tonight took a closer look at the crumbling infrastructure in the United States, from the thousands of uninspected dams across the country to bridges in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and New York that could realistically collapse at any minute: "When we're at a point where the Secretary of Transportation is struggling to decide between using the word 'unsafe' and the word 'dangerous,' we might have a problem worth fixing." Since no taxpayers or politicians seem interested in the very unglamorous job of routine road maintenance, Last Week Tonight enlisted the help of stars like Edward Norton, Vincent D'Onofrio, and Steve Buscemi to film an intense thriller called Infrastructure[...]

The 2015 Writers Guild Awards were announced over the weekend, and The Grand Budapest Hotel, Louie, The Simpsons, High Maintenance, and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver all took home awards for their work last year. Budapest won Original Screenplay, Louie won both Comedy Series and Episodic Comedy for its season 4 episode "So Did the Fat Lady," and High Maintenance's episode "Rachel" won for Short Form New Media. Check out the full list of comedy winners below:

Ahead of the season 2 Last Week Tonight premiere on February 8th, here's a brand new web exclusive featuring John Oliver giving a "condescending half-hearted apology" for his recent #NotMyChristian Twitter campaign after it was announced that Jamie Dornan was cast as Christian Grey in the 50 Shades of Grey movie. Despite the fact that the movie has already been filmed and Oliver has never read the book, he records an on-the-spot audition to prove that he's the "epitome of male beauty" and deserves the lead role in the inevitable sequel.

"We are making jokes about the news and sometimes we need to research things deeply to understand them, but it’s always in service of a joke. If you make jokes about animals, that does not make you a zoologist. We certainly hold ourselves to a high standard and fact-check everything, but the correct term for what we do is 'comedy.'"

- John Oliver rejects the idea that Last Week Tonight is "engaging in a new kind of journalism" in a new interview with The New York Times.

To celebrate the start of March Madness this week, last night's Last Week Tonight took a closer look at the NCAA's policy of not paying student athletes despite March Madness making over a billion dollars in ad revenue each year. The Last Week Tonight crew even made the most authentic college basketball video game yet called March Sadness, which allows players to discover what it's really like being the broke basketball players and the millionaires who coach them.

An Alabama judge recently defied a federal ruling by banning same-sex marriages in the state, so Last Week Tonight took a closer look at the world of elected US judges — who mostly run unopposed — and why electing judges in the world of Super PACs and expensive, ridiculous, and very "Wade Blasingame"-like campaign ads might not be such a great idea.

Last Week Tonight finally returned for its second season on HBO last night, and John Oliver got right to work by covering the many shady ways pharmaceutical companies market to doctors, from free lunches and trips to Hooters to hiring doctors as paid spokespeople called "thought leaders." Or as Oliver puts it: "Drug companies are a bit like high school boyfriends: They're much more concerned with getting inside you than being effective once they're in there." Last Week Tonight even shares its very own pharmaceutical ad at the end featuring Brian Huskey as a well-paid "thought leader" in action.

The wait for more John Oliver is almost over, and HBO released a brand new Last Week Tonight promo today in which Oliver promises an all-new show that's exactly the same as it was before. Hopefully he at least reconsiders the crime-solving pony idea.

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